Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.

- Eric Temple Bell

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

- Eric Temple Bell

Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the pre…

- Eric Temple Bell

I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.

- Eric Temple Bell

The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities whi…

- Eric Temple Bell

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.

- Eric Temple Bell

The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting im…

- Eric Temple Bell

The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future...

- Eric Temple Bell

If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which w…

- Eric Temple Bell